The Iowa State Capitol building Friday, July 31, 2020, in Des Moines.
Iowans have started weighing in on a plan to redraw the lines of the state’s congressional and legislative election boundaries and, for the most part, those who have expressed an opinion so far like it.
“I have looked at the redistricting maps and applaud the job the (Legislative Services Agency) has done. These districts are fair and were drawn on a nonpartisan basis,” Diana Wright wrote in an online comment submitted ahead of a Monday evening virtual public hearing on the redistricting plan released last week. “I would like to see them stand as drawn. Keep partisan politics out of our redistricting.”
The nonpartisan agency’s plan, created according to standards laid out in the Iowa Constitution and state law, ignores political ramifications of redrawing the congressional and legislative districts to reflect population changes shown in the 2020 census. In this case, for instance, the new lines put dozens of Iowa House and Iowa Senate members in districts with one or more other incumbents.
The standards required are population equality, keeping political subdivisions — counties and cities, for example — intact as much as possible, contiguity and compactness.
The proposed map meets those requirements and is a fair one, according to Thomas Carsner of Iowa City.
“It is judged by the LSA to be the best map. Iowa deserves the best,” he wrote. “A second or third map would be less than best. Why would we want less than the best?”
